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Archive for October, 2011

This past week, most of the world’s major media, including The Economist, Washington Post, and Nature, reported uncritically the claims of global warming by Richard Muller of the University of California at Berkeley, director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST), that has recently completed a series of four studies. However and in response...Read More »

According to an ABC News report last week, At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today [October 26], President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America. “The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we...Read More »

This lecture by Stephen Davies is the most concise and articulate 45 minute presentation I’ve ever seen or heard about the libertarian tradition and its place in the context of American history and politics. For further reading on the libertarian tradition, see nearly anything published by the Independent Institute, especially Robert Higgs, Crisis and...Read More »

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum faces severe penalties for his involvement in “what experts said was the first ever proven case of black-market organ trafficking in the United States.” He pled guilty. His lawyers said in a statement: The transplants were successful and the donors and recipients are now leading full and healthy lives. In fact,...Read More »

In chapter 24 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes laid out his screwball idea that capital might soon become, or be made to become, no longer scarce; hence no payment would have to be made to induce people to save, and that condition would be splendid inasmuch as it would...Read More »

Ten years ago today, President Bush signed the Patriot Act into law. It passed with the support of all but 66 members of the House of Representatives and one Senator. We were told at the time that it was an absolutely necessary law to give federal intelligence and law enforcement authorities the tools they...Read More »

Economic “stimulus” packages that don’t revive the economy and that increase federal deficits and undermine private investment and job growth? Check. Laws meant to protect endangered species but which incentivize landowners who have them on their property to “shoot, shovel, and shut-up”? Check. Anti-poverty programs that foster dependency and hinder participation in the job...Read More »

The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has edged out San Jose’s silicon valley as the highest-income metropolitan area in the United States, this story notes. People’s incomes can come from one of two sources. People can engage in productive activity and voluntary exchange, or they can forcibly take income from others. Silicon Valley gets its...Read More »

The title of this post comes from the fantastical Andrew Fox, who laments another case of corporate welfare promoted in the name of energy conservation: the Fisker Karma, a new electric luxury automobile touted by its manufacturer as “a bold expression of uncompromised responsible luxury.” Mr. Fox caught wind of the farce as he came...Read More »

Eastern bloc economists Carmen Reinhart, she of the University of Maryland, and Kenneth Rogoff, he of Harvard, have gotten rave reviews for This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. I started reading it today, now that the book is out in paperback. It didn’t take...Read More »